There is a lot of wisdom here, which perhaps comes with age, yet more likely comes with deep thought. We have a buy nothing group , started by a friend in a nearby small town. It works. What we don't need is still needed, and the boy with the "new" bed is quite happy. Annie Leonard, now of Greenpeace, but originally producing "The Story of Stuff" had it right, we just don't need to make, buy and celebrate so much stuff. What good is a 330 foot yacht when you can only be in one small part at a time? What good is a 6,000 square foot house when your best time is spent in one room with your kids? We create these false needs with advertising, and look what advertising brings - bought politicians, climate change, and isolation from neighbors. Is that what we really want? No, we were made to live in a garden, not a palace.
I asked for a pair of replacement script glasses, socks and for donations to be made to local food banks. My pantry is full but we are spread so thin this year at the Y to help the most in need. If you have an extra bit in your cupboard or pockets... please share that with others.
A young woman in my apartment building has a zeal for reducing landfills. It's a huge problem in New York, and seeing what goes to the curb on trash day is appalling. My neighbor (a teacher) has a Facebook site on which she advertises stuff which people must pick up themselves, and she helped me find homes for a floor lamp, a table, and an architectural ornament I no longer need. It was startling. I also sacrificed three of my favorite but moth-eaten sweaters to a textile recycler at our farmer's market. Now, I'm collecting winter clothing for Venezuelan refugees that governors from Texas and Florida have sent our way. Truth be told, I am beginning to feel that our mindless acquisition of stuff which we hoard or mindlessly discard is tied up with our refusal to acknowledge our human interdependence. And I see I am not alone.
Years ago my oldest daughter talked about sustainability. We decided that the cabinet of the President needs a Sustainability Department. We should design all things with a life of product cycle and whether or not it meets a goal of sustainability. We not only need less stuff but we need to repurpose, recycle and reuse everything. Nature does. Nature recycles every atom. We are made from atoms from dinosaurs, ferns, rocks, clouds and ultimately stars. No waste in nature. Our planet needs to be sustainable and we are killing it and us with stuff.
I have been living on the secondhand economy for the last 30+ years. It started in earnest for me in Coronado, CA as a young Navy wife as my husband’s pay as an ensign was low. All my maternity clothes and most of my baby daughter’s necessities were secondhand. Being from Massachusetts (land of the stereotypical frugal Yankees), most of our furnishings had come from relatives basements and yard sales when we were newly married. Though none of it was new, we actually had quite nice stuff. The Navy transferred us to rural Maryland after San Diego. We divorced and I found myself as a single parent just getting started in an actual career. My thrifting skills served me well under these circumstances as well. For the most part, I didn’t buy anything new. I was a regular at the local thrift shops, yard sales, and we even had an auction house nearby which sold a lot of useful stuff as opposed to high end items. Interestingly I also discontinued television at home during this time (had to pay for reception where we lived). Because I wasn’t caught up in consumerism and being marketed to via tv, I was able to send my daughter to private school with the money I saved elsewhere. To me, it was a matter of priorities. It was more important for me to spend money on her education and travel than having new things. Truly we had everything we needed and a whole lot of books. We both regularly received compliments on our secondhand wardrobes and we lived in a charming 1920s fisherman’s shack (also recycled!) filled with antiques and interesting objects that came primarily from the thrift shops and auction. Darling daughter is grown now and a savvy thrifter herself. I am retired, living in rural Maine in an 1820 farmhouse (again, secondhand!) filled with preloved books, art, furnishings, and other beautiful things I have collected over the last thirty years. Over this time, I let go of the things we no longer needed; selling at yards sales and donating to thrift shops to keep ourselves right-sized. In fact, every now and then I watch an episode of Hoarders on my phone to keep myself in check (still no tv). Here on the midcoast of Maine we have a number of great local free resources including volunteer run free clothing closets (all donated clothing is free), a weekly free cycle in Camden, Maine with pretty much everything imaginable organized by a church, year round garage sales held by a nonprofit raising funds to address the local housing crisis, and free swap shops at various town dumps. Also, we have flea markets (both indoor in the winter and outside during the better weather) nearby filled with great low cost secondhand stuff. I visit these places on the regular to pass on what I no longer need and look for things that would be helpful to have. I still thrift, but on my retirement income “free” has been exceedlingly helpful during this period of high inflation. I share word of these resources with the folks I meet here and there and while out thrifting. Some people keep this sort of knowledge to themselves out of a selfish concern that there won’t be enough to go around. I am here to tell you there is plenty of stuff out there. Plenty. I started living on the secondhand economy long before it was trendy. I am happy to see this movement go mainstream. In my opinion, it is a better, more sustainable way for us all to live. That is my story, and I am sticking to it!
I love this idea. Like any massive transformation - social norms around what is means to use recycled stuff need to shift. In the Bay Area my sister is huge on the Buy Nothing group and it 100% works. But in other areas buying new, bigger and better still rules. Need more mainstream campaigns and media support to normalize the "recycled economy" - it's possible!!
Awesome, awesome post. I have radically reduced my consumption after reading "Less is More," by Jason Hickel. It will make you angry and sick to your stomach for being duped into buying the closets/houses/attics/storage units of shit you don't need. As a society, we've been seduced by a combination of advertising messages for "bigger, better, faster, cheaper, more," planned obsolescence, and access to easy credit to spend money we don't have, reinforcing acquisitive behavior patterns that serve as a proxy for individual agency. This faux empowerment is only a temporary fix, though, and leads to great personal suffering when the "stuff" doesn't satisfy the real human needs of individual purpose, dignity, and community. Meanwhile that "stuff" further extracted resources from a dying planet, elevated temperatures, generated more non-biodegradable waste, killed off more biodiversity, contributed to climate disasters, created more climate refugees. If you want to make a difference in this world and take back power from a system that values growth and profits for the sole purpose of growth and profits, #StopBuying. That's the only way the people can take back our dignity, our planet, our power. We are so much more powerful than we realize, but only when we #StandTogether and #ActTogether.
As one who already shares a lawnmower and assorted tools, I stand solidly behind a recycled economy. But as economists know, economies depend on a circulation not just of goods but of money. What’s needed to make Reich’s solution work is not just stuff left at the end of the driveway but a massive shift to services that matter. Paying far fewer people to work crap jobs selling stuff, paying far more people to work in genuine service. Cutting the average classroom size in half by doubling the number of teachers would be a start. I’d like to believe that’s a possibility but it would take an entire reshifting of our deep and abiding disdain for schools and teachers and our deep and abiding need for stuff.
I am a 75 year old woman who hasn't bought ANYTHING from a store in years. I am retired. I volunteer
at a hugh thrift shop. EVERYTHING I want or need comes from the 2nd hand store. Even such mundane things as unbleached coffee filters or replacement heads for my electric toothbrush I find
there. I am living the life you propose. My income is small but my expenses are much smaller. My bank account continues to grow even though I am wearing designer clothes and have lovely tasteful furniture and accessories. I do not give or want for myself gifts of "stuff" at birthdays or holidays. Experiences of concerts, musical performances or travel have far more value these days. Life is good!
Totally agree! I always check thrift shops or yard sales before buying anything new, and I do not throw out anything usable. I donate to those same thrift shops. Trading would be infinitely better than that, and I have seen signs of it beginning in my area. I hope it continues to become more popular.
My parents gave their 4 daughters along with our families the gift of deciding at 82 they would move from their house to a senior living apartment complex. They needed no help, perfectly healthy, they searched for a lovely, reasonable, safe and pleasant senior living facility. They allowed us to take what we or our children would like, donated their stuff to various recycling and second hand shops. That was over 8 years ago. Dad died in ‘19, right before COVID and Mom is still doing well at 92, still in their original apartment. I’d like to point out the facility’s COVID infection rates were very low and Mom, who is fully vaccinated has never contracted COVID or any variants.
May I point out that as mayor of Braddock, PA, incoming US Senator John Fetterman and his wife Giselle, ran a successful store of regularly needed household items and supplies in their town helping the community’s lower income residents readily stretch their dollars on things they couldn’t afford brand new.
Along with larger resale shops such as Salvation Army, St Vincent DePaul, online message boards and community outreach, these locally owned resale and recycle shops are popular and needed. They’re everywhere. People like to feel their donations of items no longer needed in their homes will find a purpose and make a difference in other homes.
I was thinking that civic minded folk with pick up trucks might offer a few hours a week helping people get needed items (furniture, appliances) from the store to their homes. It doesn’t do any good if you can’t get a needed washer /dryer home. A fee to cover the price of gas or a small donation, people can get the items they need to their homes. That would go a long way to keep things cycling.
The inescapable plastic waste, even from just buying groceries, is a huge ecological problem. We need to fix that with a punitive tax and good packaging alternatives.
But the proposal that the world’s most capitalist country will measure itself by something other than GDP is so cute! Dr Reich, sometimes your subtle humor cracks me up.
Think about what you see on the shelves in stores when you go looking for some thing. How many millions of screwdrivers are out there on store shelves while there are millions of screwdrivers sitting on used with people‘s stuff. To me the critical issue is as you put it, infinite wants from finite resources. Most of my non-food shopping for years has been through Freecycle and thrift and consignment stores people who come to my home love what I have, and a huge percentage of it is recycled. This planet will not survive if we don’t stop using resources to make more of what we already have plenty of .
We used to bring our own trash to the landfill in Southern Rhode Island and I’d sometimes come home with more than I took. I recall a mountain of books at the entrance one Saturday. They came from a small rural library. The dump master sat on a milk carton, tearing the covers off books — like plucking chickens. I screamed at him to stop until I could go through the pile. I took three cases of pre-1900 books home that day.
After growing up with almost all hand-me-downs anyway, I started wearing thrift store clothing back in college when it was cool and vintage. But I came to see the advantages of second-hand clothes and now I barely buy any new clothing beyond bras, socks, and underwear. Benefits are many: you already know what will happen to it when it's washed; if current fashion trends don't fit your tastes, you can pick out things from former decades; you can afford much nicer brands that will last longer; shoes are already broken in and will not give you blisters; the variety!
There is a lot of wisdom here, which perhaps comes with age, yet more likely comes with deep thought. We have a buy nothing group , started by a friend in a nearby small town. It works. What we don't need is still needed, and the boy with the "new" bed is quite happy. Annie Leonard, now of Greenpeace, but originally producing "The Story of Stuff" had it right, we just don't need to make, buy and celebrate so much stuff. What good is a 330 foot yacht when you can only be in one small part at a time? What good is a 6,000 square foot house when your best time is spent in one room with your kids? We create these false needs with advertising, and look what advertising brings - bought politicians, climate change, and isolation from neighbors. Is that what we really want? No, we were made to live in a garden, not a palace.
Here is George Carlin on stuff: https://youtu.be/4x_QkGPCL18
I asked for a pair of replacement script glasses, socks and for donations to be made to local food banks. My pantry is full but we are spread so thin this year at the Y to help the most in need. If you have an extra bit in your cupboard or pockets... please share that with others.
A young woman in my apartment building has a zeal for reducing landfills. It's a huge problem in New York, and seeing what goes to the curb on trash day is appalling. My neighbor (a teacher) has a Facebook site on which she advertises stuff which people must pick up themselves, and she helped me find homes for a floor lamp, a table, and an architectural ornament I no longer need. It was startling. I also sacrificed three of my favorite but moth-eaten sweaters to a textile recycler at our farmer's market. Now, I'm collecting winter clothing for Venezuelan refugees that governors from Texas and Florida have sent our way. Truth be told, I am beginning to feel that our mindless acquisition of stuff which we hoard or mindlessly discard is tied up with our refusal to acknowledge our human interdependence. And I see I am not alone.
Years ago my oldest daughter talked about sustainability. We decided that the cabinet of the President needs a Sustainability Department. We should design all things with a life of product cycle and whether or not it meets a goal of sustainability. We not only need less stuff but we need to repurpose, recycle and reuse everything. Nature does. Nature recycles every atom. We are made from atoms from dinosaurs, ferns, rocks, clouds and ultimately stars. No waste in nature. Our planet needs to be sustainable and we are killing it and us with stuff.
I have been living on the secondhand economy for the last 30+ years. It started in earnest for me in Coronado, CA as a young Navy wife as my husband’s pay as an ensign was low. All my maternity clothes and most of my baby daughter’s necessities were secondhand. Being from Massachusetts (land of the stereotypical frugal Yankees), most of our furnishings had come from relatives basements and yard sales when we were newly married. Though none of it was new, we actually had quite nice stuff. The Navy transferred us to rural Maryland after San Diego. We divorced and I found myself as a single parent just getting started in an actual career. My thrifting skills served me well under these circumstances as well. For the most part, I didn’t buy anything new. I was a regular at the local thrift shops, yard sales, and we even had an auction house nearby which sold a lot of useful stuff as opposed to high end items. Interestingly I also discontinued television at home during this time (had to pay for reception where we lived). Because I wasn’t caught up in consumerism and being marketed to via tv, I was able to send my daughter to private school with the money I saved elsewhere. To me, it was a matter of priorities. It was more important for me to spend money on her education and travel than having new things. Truly we had everything we needed and a whole lot of books. We both regularly received compliments on our secondhand wardrobes and we lived in a charming 1920s fisherman’s shack (also recycled!) filled with antiques and interesting objects that came primarily from the thrift shops and auction. Darling daughter is grown now and a savvy thrifter herself. I am retired, living in rural Maine in an 1820 farmhouse (again, secondhand!) filled with preloved books, art, furnishings, and other beautiful things I have collected over the last thirty years. Over this time, I let go of the things we no longer needed; selling at yards sales and donating to thrift shops to keep ourselves right-sized. In fact, every now and then I watch an episode of Hoarders on my phone to keep myself in check (still no tv). Here on the midcoast of Maine we have a number of great local free resources including volunteer run free clothing closets (all donated clothing is free), a weekly free cycle in Camden, Maine with pretty much everything imaginable organized by a church, year round garage sales held by a nonprofit raising funds to address the local housing crisis, and free swap shops at various town dumps. Also, we have flea markets (both indoor in the winter and outside during the better weather) nearby filled with great low cost secondhand stuff. I visit these places on the regular to pass on what I no longer need and look for things that would be helpful to have. I still thrift, but on my retirement income “free” has been exceedlingly helpful during this period of high inflation. I share word of these resources with the folks I meet here and there and while out thrifting. Some people keep this sort of knowledge to themselves out of a selfish concern that there won’t be enough to go around. I am here to tell you there is plenty of stuff out there. Plenty. I started living on the secondhand economy long before it was trendy. I am happy to see this movement go mainstream. In my opinion, it is a better, more sustainable way for us all to live. That is my story, and I am sticking to it!
I love this idea. Like any massive transformation - social norms around what is means to use recycled stuff need to shift. In the Bay Area my sister is huge on the Buy Nothing group and it 100% works. But in other areas buying new, bigger and better still rules. Need more mainstream campaigns and media support to normalize the "recycled economy" - it's possible!!
Awesome, awesome post. I have radically reduced my consumption after reading "Less is More," by Jason Hickel. It will make you angry and sick to your stomach for being duped into buying the closets/houses/attics/storage units of shit you don't need. As a society, we've been seduced by a combination of advertising messages for "bigger, better, faster, cheaper, more," planned obsolescence, and access to easy credit to spend money we don't have, reinforcing acquisitive behavior patterns that serve as a proxy for individual agency. This faux empowerment is only a temporary fix, though, and leads to great personal suffering when the "stuff" doesn't satisfy the real human needs of individual purpose, dignity, and community. Meanwhile that "stuff" further extracted resources from a dying planet, elevated temperatures, generated more non-biodegradable waste, killed off more biodiversity, contributed to climate disasters, created more climate refugees. If you want to make a difference in this world and take back power from a system that values growth and profits for the sole purpose of growth and profits, #StopBuying. That's the only way the people can take back our dignity, our planet, our power. We are so much more powerful than we realize, but only when we #StandTogether and #ActTogether.
As one who already shares a lawnmower and assorted tools, I stand solidly behind a recycled economy. But as economists know, economies depend on a circulation not just of goods but of money. What’s needed to make Reich’s solution work is not just stuff left at the end of the driveway but a massive shift to services that matter. Paying far fewer people to work crap jobs selling stuff, paying far more people to work in genuine service. Cutting the average classroom size in half by doubling the number of teachers would be a start. I’d like to believe that’s a possibility but it would take an entire reshifting of our deep and abiding disdain for schools and teachers and our deep and abiding need for stuff.
I am a 75 year old woman who hasn't bought ANYTHING from a store in years. I am retired. I volunteer
at a hugh thrift shop. EVERYTHING I want or need comes from the 2nd hand store. Even such mundane things as unbleached coffee filters or replacement heads for my electric toothbrush I find
there. I am living the life you propose. My income is small but my expenses are much smaller. My bank account continues to grow even though I am wearing designer clothes and have lovely tasteful furniture and accessories. I do not give or want for myself gifts of "stuff" at birthdays or holidays. Experiences of concerts, musical performances or travel have far more value these days. Life is good!
Totally agree! I always check thrift shops or yard sales before buying anything new, and I do not throw out anything usable. I donate to those same thrift shops. Trading would be infinitely better than that, and I have seen signs of it beginning in my area. I hope it continues to become more popular.
My parents gave their 4 daughters along with our families the gift of deciding at 82 they would move from their house to a senior living apartment complex. They needed no help, perfectly healthy, they searched for a lovely, reasonable, safe and pleasant senior living facility. They allowed us to take what we or our children would like, donated their stuff to various recycling and second hand shops. That was over 8 years ago. Dad died in ‘19, right before COVID and Mom is still doing well at 92, still in their original apartment. I’d like to point out the facility’s COVID infection rates were very low and Mom, who is fully vaccinated has never contracted COVID or any variants.
May I point out that as mayor of Braddock, PA, incoming US Senator John Fetterman and his wife Giselle, ran a successful store of regularly needed household items and supplies in their town helping the community’s lower income residents readily stretch their dollars on things they couldn’t afford brand new.
Along with larger resale shops such as Salvation Army, St Vincent DePaul, online message boards and community outreach, these locally owned resale and recycle shops are popular and needed. They’re everywhere. People like to feel their donations of items no longer needed in their homes will find a purpose and make a difference in other homes.
I was thinking that civic minded folk with pick up trucks might offer a few hours a week helping people get needed items (furniture, appliances) from the store to their homes. It doesn’t do any good if you can’t get a needed washer /dryer home. A fee to cover the price of gas or a small donation, people can get the items they need to their homes. That would go a long way to keep things cycling.
The inescapable plastic waste, even from just buying groceries, is a huge ecological problem. We need to fix that with a punitive tax and good packaging alternatives.
But the proposal that the world’s most capitalist country will measure itself by something other than GDP is so cute! Dr Reich, sometimes your subtle humor cracks me up.
Think about what you see on the shelves in stores when you go looking for some thing. How many millions of screwdrivers are out there on store shelves while there are millions of screwdrivers sitting on used with people‘s stuff. To me the critical issue is as you put it, infinite wants from finite resources. Most of my non-food shopping for years has been through Freecycle and thrift and consignment stores people who come to my home love what I have, and a huge percentage of it is recycled. This planet will not survive if we don’t stop using resources to make more of what we already have plenty of .
We used to bring our own trash to the landfill in Southern Rhode Island and I’d sometimes come home with more than I took. I recall a mountain of books at the entrance one Saturday. They came from a small rural library. The dump master sat on a milk carton, tearing the covers off books — like plucking chickens. I screamed at him to stop until I could go through the pile. I took three cases of pre-1900 books home that day.
After growing up with almost all hand-me-downs anyway, I started wearing thrift store clothing back in college when it was cool and vintage. But I came to see the advantages of second-hand clothes and now I barely buy any new clothing beyond bras, socks, and underwear. Benefits are many: you already know what will happen to it when it's washed; if current fashion trends don't fit your tastes, you can pick out things from former decades; you can afford much nicer brands that will last longer; shoes are already broken in and will not give you blisters; the variety!